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Bass notes "avoiding" the tonic

Posted

I've made an arragement with this progression : Fm Ab Db Bbm Cm, only with piano, drums and bass for the moment . I have tried lots of bass phrases from my libraries, but none of them are hitting ever the "F" note in the Fm chord, the Ab in the Ab chord, and so on. Only Db is hit as a bass note when Db chord appears. Also, I tried to move up and down the bass notes, but they seem to "avoid" the tonic of the chord they are playing along with - for example, no matter how up/down I move the bass chords for the "Fm" chord,  they never hit the "F" note. I also tried to modify the "take" parameter with "melodic bass" preset, and get the bass notes in pink, set as bass notes, but I get the same results. Any hint would be appreciated! Thank you!


Sat, 2014-01-18 - 10:15 Permalink

Did you already try having an instrument with a big playing range, like a piano, play the bass?

Does it also avoid the tonic then?

I've had lots of "interesting" playing range issues here lately.

Sat, 2014-01-18 - 11:07 Permalink

I've just tested it and it works as expected for me. Maybe you could upload a short example file for verification?

 

When I have issues like these, then there is the mostly the reason that I lost a bit track of the arrangement. For example, that I look at a progression that is actually not played at all because it is overwritten by another progression in another container.

 

Sat, 2014-01-18 - 16:15 Permalink

The bass instrument may use chord inversions that are selected according to its playing range.

You can force a bass note in the progression. That should fix it.

Thu, 2014-01-23 - 16:21 Permalink

"You can force a bass note in the progression. That should fix it." - I have tried that, no F note was played o n the Fm, only C, Eb, G etc.

I have attached the project, and I noticed this: while the general harmony was Fm, the bass was playing in Cm.

What I did was to transpose the main container from Fm to Bbm so that the bass to play from Cm to Fm.

 

Anyway, I have tried with a piano sound and it works, then I have changed it into another bass tone and switched the sound category from piano to bass and now it works with bass.

But then I tried another piano tone, and it got back in Cm instead of Fm.

Anyway, now the piano plays with the bass tone. I press on " plug-in editor", the piano preset is set in nexus 2, but it still plays with bass tone. How is that possible? Is that because I work with different instances of Nexus?

 

 

Thu, 2014-01-23 - 18:48 Permalink

I have checked your example. It's the influence of the Interpretation parameter. At the instrument 'New Bass' you have set it to the preset "Keyboard (Mixed)". If you set it to the preset "Bass" you will get results that are a little closer to that what you have expected. And if you bypass Interpretation completely (with the checkbox "Bypass") then you get exactly the desired result. However, it sounds not so good then. Too static. I would leave Interpretation switched on.